Best Mobile App Design Prototyping Tools
If you are involved in mobile app development, you would have heard of the term prototyping. Mobile app prototyping is referred to as a representation of how an application would flow from one screen to another. Therefore it is a crucial part of any user interface design and helps designers to understand the mobile app idea. Let’s get to know more about it.
What is Mobile App Prototyping?
Mobile App prototyping is the part of a design process that lets you and your team review the ideas and share the feedback at the beginning of the mobile app development project. It is also an important exercise that shows how the mobile application will work by offering the user flows and portraying the functioning layout.
The mobile app prototype showcases how the app will work. You can find multiple prototyping techniques; however, in mobile application development, the prototyping begins with the sketches that develop the intuitive model while resembling the result. The core objective behind the prototyping is to convey the product’s design and route the stream to increase the proficiency of the development.
What is the Rapid Prototyping tool?
Rapid Prototyping tool refers to an authoring apparatus that helps business analysts, developers, and designers to build web and mobile prototypes. This model allows the customers to stimulate the real-world business experience. This also assists with approving business necessities and improves the visualization of the end product. The popularity of this prototyping tool implies that there are all types of brilliant assets accessible for designers to explore.
Here in this guide, we have arranged some quick prototyping tools for developers and UI/UI designers to help you integrate the procedure into your work process. Now that you have understood the benefits of mobile prototyping, let’s look at available prototyping tools. Before that, let’s know some of the features of these prototyping tools.
What are the features of the best prototyping tools?
1.Offer custom component libraries, made especially for mobile apps.
The mobile app prototyping that you use should make developing an app easy to customize the component library as per different mobile screens. You should be able to customize the components library as per the app mood that your brand is planning to portray.
2.Output demo to mobile for making the preview of effect easy
The mobile app prototyping model should make it possible for you to look at every change. You should be able to check the prototype design changes straight into your mobile device.
3.Support mobile gesture functionality
The mobile app prototyping model should give you the functionality to choose the device. This can help design the prototype around the built-in gesture elements of the mobile device.
4.Support transition animation in a switch of the mobile view
Energy has become a crucial part of the mobile app design process, and therefore all prototyping tools need to have the functionality of adding the transition animation. This helps designers, investors, and developers know the application’s movement from one screen to the other.
5.Generate the flow chart
The right mobile application prototyping tool should give you the ability to generate the flow chart. This flow chart would come in handy for all the first-level prototype stakeholders to know how the events flow from one screen to another.
Now that you know the characteristics of the right mobile app prototyping tools let’s understand some of its benefits to get you closer to developing a mobile app.
What are the benefits of Mobile App prototyping?
There are several benefits mobile app prototyping can offer you. Such as:
1.Sharing concepts and gathering feedback
Mobile App prototyping offers Sharing of concepts and gathering the feedback that helps you understand the first level ready flow of the mobile app function. Besides this, it also allows you to collect feedback on how the app looks on devices.
2.Saving Money on development
The overall cost involved in mobile app development is established based on the number of hours going into the process and the resources. However, with a prototype, you would be able to save on the cost as you would have the rough version of the original mobile app.
3.Clarity
Mobile app prototype helps designers and developers clarify what exactly has to be built. This clarity helps them get a head start on what is required to start the whole development process.
What are the different types of Mobile App Prototyping tools?
1.Paper Prototyping
This type of prototyping model lets you start with designing the mobile app prototype without any special skills. You do not even need to understand different online tools used to learn to prototype. There are various tools you can use to start with paper prototyping.
- Sketch Templates for the mobile, tablet, and web platforms on sketchappsources.com
- Offline prototype with the help of stencil from uistencils.com
- Use the popapp.in to connect the Sketch of photos from one another while creating the new app flow.
2.Software Prototyping
Paper Prototyping is useful for entrepreneurs to share their ideas with the world; however, with software prototypes, you can create and develop mobile app prototypes that are handier and more cost-effective.
Now let’s jump to the list of 28 prototyping tools for web and mobile apps that are known to make the overall development process easier for mobile app developers and designers.
Best 28 Mobile App Prototyping Tools
1.Sketch
This vector-specific design tool makes it easier for developers to forget about resolutions or the on-screen densities while creating the mockups, layouts, or logos. This tool comes with image editing abilities to make it as capable as photoshop. One of the best parts of this tool is the set of symbols. You can use these symbols to pre-design the elements like widgets, buttons, and other navigation items. Another best part of the Sketch tool is the export to code function. You can rapidly format the design in codes and facilitate a faster development process with high convenience.
2.Adobe Experience Design
This go-to tool for PC users has become very popular in less time. Adobe Experience Design is 100% integrated with all other Adobe products, making it easy for designers to copy and paste the different assets from photoshop tool to illustrator. Adobe Experience Design comes with all the functionalities available in Sketch, along with a clean and intuitive interface. This tool also comes with a drag and drop function to create the image mask for objects dropped from the finder to a specific space in the tool.
3.InVision
InVision allows you to develop interactive mockups for web and mobile objects. One of the main features of this tool is the ease of design, review, testing, and then sharing the results with internal team members. This tool also comes with the ability to sync with photoshop or sketch documents that allow designers to update the prototype in real-time inside the design suite according to their preference. The other best feature of this tool is its project collaboration, which will enable clients to give feedback on the development. Besides all these, InVision also lets you add animations and interactions in the static images while giving them the functionality of uploading file types like GIF, PSD, JPEG, PNG, etc.
4.Framer
A framer is designed for the elite apple users and lets them develop the elaborated UX flow and add and shape to it. This also simplifies the development of the layout, which is responsive to every screen size while keeping the UI elements intact. Another best part of framer is the advanced path editing that lets you draw everything optimized for the web. The tool also offers the best icons and style required for developing exceptional prototypes.
5.Balsamiq
Balsamiq lets you quickly sketch the concepts on the fly mode. This graphic tool comes in handy in every different circumstance like websites, desktop apps, mobile apps, and user interfaces. This tool is convenient for dragging and positioning the other elements while giving designers the same experience as they would get when working on the whiteboards. With its slick UI and minimalist appearance, this tool makes it possible for developers to easily develop the prototype and wireframe for the clients.
6.Origami
This standalone interface design tool was developed by the Facebook Engineers and used by different apps like Facebook Messenger and Instagram. This is a complex tool that comes with amazingly great functionality. Origami also lets you preview the app prototype, copy and then paste layers with Sketch and then get it to work on Origami. This tool also enables you to record the prototype and send it to the people from the app. Origami offers another amazing benefit that it can be connected to the iOS device or Android device and then preview live.
7.Behance Landing Page UI Kit
The Behance Landing Page UI Kit is a free design resource with over 80 layouts in the popular categories. This tool is perfect for all businesses looking to modernize the look of their pages. You can create sleek and minimalistic landing pages using this tool.
8.Axure
Axure is the complete design tool for designers that gives you the functionalities required to design the apps from start to end. Besides prototyping, this app also lets you create mockups, persona, idea boards, diagramming, etc.; this tool is not only for designers but also useful for coders. It allows you to code and add the ready components and libraries and therefore helps you to create better designs.
9.Atomic
Atomic is one of the top-rated web-based prototyping tools. This requires Google Chrome to work to give the designers the total control and flexibility to fine-tune their interactions. This tool offers easy access to the developers and provides a shared prototyping system. Atomic also lets you access the history option that allows rewinding of previously done iterations and creating new versions.
10.Principle
This platform-independent prototyping tool makes it easier to design the elements to pop, ease, and bounce faster. It also offers freedom to the transition between one screen to another while giving the capacity of animation to the designers and letting them animate more than one element on the same page.
11.Just in Mind
Just in Mind is the all-in-one tool used to develop interactive prototypes that come with over 500 widgets for mobile and web apps. This tool also lets developers test mockups from the device of their choice.
12.Wireframe.cc
Wireframe.cc is a minimalistic web app that makes it easy to create low-level prototypes for quick visualization of the app idea. One of the best features of this tool is that it supports and promotes teamwork and makes it easier to comment on prototypes, hotkeys, and sharing.
13.Pidaco
Pidaco lets you collaborate at the prototype development stage and makes the template customization convenient for the team. With Pidaco, you can create interactive prototypes at minimal time and lower the development and design phase while sparing the extra cost involved.
14.Mockplus
Mockplus is one of the top prototyping tools that makes it easier for you to analyze and develop a lo-fi prototype. Even though it is a minimalistic app, you can create interactive prototypes with the help of a comprehensive UI component library.
15.Proto.io
Proto.io lets you develop a detailed prototype and allows you to work on the micro-interactions with mobile app users with its interface animation feature. Proto.io also makes it possible to test the developed prototypes with the help of a convenient system used for sharing and teamwork.
16.Flinto
Flinto is the fully functional Mac supporting app that lets you create a hi-fi prototype. You can easily integrate the app with Sketch via a plugin, which enables you to develop the animated prototype conveniently. Flinto also gives you the freedom to create the prototype and share it with the team.
17.UXPin
UXPin is a multipurpose web tool that lets you create hi-fi and lo-fi prototypes. This app comes with an easy commenting system that gives easy collaboration within the team. UXPin also gives you the provision to open up the Sketch projects and a library of dozens of UI Kits.
18.Marvel
Marvel is one of the easiest mobile and web app prototyping tools for designers to start prototype development. This tool comes with a simple interface and promises a very low learning curve for the designers. One of the biggest appeals of the tool is its features that fulfill the needs of advanced designers while making it one of the best prototyping tools for beginners and their experienced counterparts.
19.OmniGraffle
OmniGraffle gives you the freedom to create the prototype of screen flow, strategy map, wireframe, and several other diagrams. With this tool, you can easily visualize the flow of the app, which helps in planning the whole app development process without much hassle.
20.HotGloo
HotGloo is the proper interface design tool that enables designers to prototype several mobile applications with amazing interactive features. This tool also lets designers operate on specific wireframes no matter where they are. It is a web-based tool; therefore, you can work on it from anywhere and do not need to download any specific software.
21.Zeplin
Zeplin is a collaboration tool for designers and developers that offers much more than design and workflow. This app enables app designers to develop the complete masterpiece and upload the visual designs and wireframe from Sketch and photoshop. You can then add it to your Zeplin’s project folder. With Zeplin, developers do not have to wait for designs to finish.
22.IconJar
IconJar tool makes it possible to organize the icons and bring them to one place from where you can search, drag and drop in the project on photoshop or Sketch. Searching or uploading the icons for prototypes can be stressful. However, with IconJar, you can organize millions of icons in a single place and then add them in photoshop or illustrator with a single drag and drop.
23.Fluid UI
Flid UI is a one-stop-shop solution to design, communicate and collaborate on the requirements. This platform is a must-have for designers looking for powerful collaboration features used for design. It also lets you create the prototypes, present designs, and then collect the feedback inside the single platform.
24.MindNode
MindNode is the simple interface and zero complex features tool used to design relationship maps. This tool lets you prioritize the most important work while working on some designs. This tool also enables you to set the deadlines and reminders on the platform to ensure that you work within a timeline. You can fold and unfold the nodes using MindNode when you need access to the project. It is also easy to share the project with other people and handle it through a collaborative effort with its cloud software.
25.Vectr
Vector lets you design the prototype on Vectr’s desktop and web app designed for Mac and windows. This is one of the top mobile app prototype software that helps you create the prototype on a web browser and desktop. Therefore, it makes it easier for you to work while giving you access to all the changes. The prototype developed through Vectr can be shared with others through URL and integrated into applications like Slack for collaboration.
26.Prott
The Prott prototyping tool lets you photograph the rough sketches and then import them straight into the Prott’s iOS and Android apps. You can use these sketches to build the prototypes. This also makes the presentation easy with the help of its interactive and effective presentation resource. This tool is also known to offer a wide range of collaboration tools for the developers to make the design sharing an easy process.
27.Webflow
Webflow offers a code-free interface and comes with an eCommerce feature. This makes Webflow captivating for developers to build modern shopping apps and websites.
28.CanvasFlip
The last tool in this app is CanvasFlip which ensures four times faster prototyping than many other prototyping tools on the market. CanvasFlip also comes with several notable features like setting footers and headers, timers showing splash screens, layers for displaying messages, etc. These features are beneficial for designers as well as for developers.
Final Thoughts :
We are sure that you must have got familiar with these best mobile app prototyping tools at the end of this guide. However, if you are unsure which one to use for your project, then our team is here to help you. Get in touch with our Wama Technology and start building your app today.
